Tale Of Two Cities: Berlin Split By "Wall Of The Mind"

BERLIN — Great cities rarely get a chance to re-create themselves by perfecting an urban design with grand, sweeping alterations to the skyline.

When it happens, it's usually a case of catastrophe clearing the underbrush for genius.

Think of Chicago after the Great Fire, Or Berlin after World War II-or, again, Berlin after the fall of the Wall and the demise of communism in the east.

The drawing board for the future Berlin includes the world's largest collection of construction deals in a half-century, more than 2,000 major building sites.

The historic Reichstag will be remodeled, and a new array of government buildings will be constructed in a bend of the Spree River. Potsdamer Platz, once the busiest intersection in Europe, will be converted from a trench recently guarded by Communist border guards to the new home of Sony and Mercedes. Alexanderplatz will become a mini-Chicago Loop. The elegant Gendarmenmarkt will be returned to grandeur.

No one, however, seems able to say whether Berlin will become a modern, high-rise metropolis or a 21st Century capital with 19th Century elegance. But everybody has an opinion.

As this city marks the fifth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, it is clear that simply razing the barrier was not enough to reunite two halves of the new capital of the new Europe.

Nobody knows, however, whether building over the 100-mile-long Death Strip on the east side of the former Wall will simply repair the scars without healing the wounds of 3.4 million Berliners still divided by what people call "a Wall of the mind."

"Architecture alone cannot unite this city," said Kristina Laduch, head of town planning for the Mitte district in central east Berlin, site of most of the new construction. "The real question is, how much do we save from before, and how much do we tear down and rebuild? Parts of east Berlin are like a time machine to the 1930s."

About the only opinion on which Berliners are unanimous is that their city remains divided.

In a newspaper poll last week, 98 percent of the people surveyed said Berlin remains two distinct cities. Thirty percent said it will take 15 years for people to stop thinking of each other in the pejorative terms "Ossies" for easterners and "Wessies" for those from former West Berlin.

And just last month, an electoral wall was erected. Easterners voted overwhelmingly for the Party of Democratic Socialism, successor to the East German Communists who built the Berlin Wall. Western Berliners voted just as overwhelmingly for the traditional West German parties.

Subway lines split by the Wall have been rejoined, but breakdowns at the trench are frequent. The electrical grids of the city's two halves also have been united, but on the eastern current, which undergoes power fluctuations. So electric clocks in the west run four minutes too fast each day.

Worst of all are construction-related traffic problems, with the stau (traffic jam) replacing Stasi (the former secret police) as the most hated word in German.

Over the next five years, 25 percent of Berlin's 800 miles of major roads will be closed for repairs. In the parks, kids in the sandbox don't carve roads; they line up their toy cars and play stau.

Despite the problems, daily life in Berlin beats with a strong pulse. It's just that the city has no heart. It also has no anchor, no center, and no center of gravity.

Rather, the city has two competing centers-one in the east, at the intersection of Friedrichstrasse and the boulevard Unter den Linden, a tarnished but magnificent antique awaiting the renovator's art; and one in the west, along the glitzy and delightfully vulgar Kurfurstendamm shopping avenue.

The fight over the future Berlin, then, has something for everybody.

Architects and city planners display their egos and intellect on TV and in prestige journals, arguing whether Berlin is to become "a neo-fascist capital" designed by an approved mafia of architects devoted not to "a New Simplicity" but to "a New Teutonia."

The "New Teutonia" warning can be explained simply. While the fall of the Wall eliminated communism, a shadow of angst about old totalitarianism remains. There is a lingering inability to deal with German national identity and the Nazi past. Berlin cannot redefine itself or reinvent itself until these questions are resolved.

When tourists ask, "Where's the Bunker?" the answer depends on whether they are looking for the sealed underground headquarters where Hitler committed suicide, or for the hippest new dance club.

One alleged villain in the autocratic corner is Hans Stimmann, the municipal director of building, who has imposed rigid restrictions on new construction in the city center for height, materials and overall use. No building may be higher than 72 feet; facades must be of stone or plaster in yellow or beige to match the Brandenburg Gate; and every wall must be at least 30 percent windows symmetrically arranged.